Lisa's Laws: Is it really so surprising that moms can be great athletes?

Sunday

Aug 5, 2012 at 2:00 AM

There's been an awful lot of commentary about the London Olympic commentary, the ceaseless, sometimes illuminating, other times banal, air-filling remarks made by the comment-obsessed commentators.

Lisa Ramirez

There's been an awful lot of commentary about the London Olympic commentary, the ceaseless, sometimes illuminating, other times banal, air-filling remarks made by the comment-obsessed commentators.

Now generally I like a good comment, and, in fact, very often have trouble refraining myself from making comments. My mother will tell you. Even as a kid I liked to make comments, many of which got me sent to my room or cost me my allowance.

Nevertheless, the Olympic commentary seems bit overdone. Silence is OK sometimes, and commentary can easily segue into pointless blather if the aforementioned commentators don't practice a smidgen of self-restraint.

And there was plenty of that. Yapping about British health care, Matt Lauer's' indecision over the giant baby (creepy or cute? He couldn't decide), their thoughts on the National Health Service, Bob Costas' kinda mean jibes about countries who never had won, and likely never will win, a medal. At times it was kinda like being stuck in a plane seat next to a super-talkative know-it-all. No matter how hard you try to ignore them, you just can't.

The comment that really got my attention, though, was during the Parade of Athletes, somewhere near the beginning of the alphabet. I don't remember what country it was, or whether it was Lauer or Costas who said it, but as the men were chatting about an athlete's medal chances one of the guys exclaimed, "And she had two children since Beijing!"

Well, I have to admit, that is impressive. Beijing was four years ago, and having two kids in that span means that the Olympian could very well have had two kids in diapers at the same time, which can get really, really expensive. That, and they both have to be in car seats, and putting two little ones in car seats every time you go somewhere can complicate the simplest of errands. Even so, lots of women manage it all the time.

Thing is, I was just a little bit jarred by the commentator's well, awe, that a woman could, after having a couple of babies, be herself again. Sure, having a baby makes more than a few demands on a body, but not too many women I know have been able to lie around on the couch since becoming mothers. We have babies, we take care of them, we make cupcakes and kiss boo-boos and help with homework and it's a really, really big job. But most of us also manage to do other stuff, too. We go back to work. We go back to school. A few of us even get back on the treadmill. Or the bicycle, or the volleyball court, or into the swimming pool.

In fact, on the U.S. Olympic team alone there are 13 moms, including basketball player Candace Parker, high jumper Amy Acuff, weightlifter Melanie Roach, marathoner Kara Goucher and swimmers Dara Torres, Amanda Beard and Janet Evans.

U.S. discuss thrower Aretha Thurmond, who has a 5-year-old son and is competing in her fourth Olympics, put it this way in a July 26 NBC interview:

"What cut a lot of women's careers short was the belief that once they started a family, that was it. But we're showing people that you can have kids and go back to work, to athletic training. You come back stronger from the experience, not weaker."